Wherever You Go, There You Are (A Love Letter)

Here, there, and everywhere

Where I’ve been. Please ignore the 5,000 tabs open on my desktop.

Hello lovies,

Wait a minute, where were we?

Oh right, when last I wrote you (yes, I missed last Sunday, forgive me but I was on a 14-hour flight from Rome to L.A. and then another flight up to Portland), I told of our long, strange journey from Céret to Perugia and our travails with lodging. And before that, I wrote about the writing workshop in Céret. Oh, and I did manage to at least get the October prompt post done.

And now I am home! It is raining, lovely, old-fashioned Oregon rain, not the downpours we experienced in Paris or Perugia, just a good steady rain. From this vantage point, much of September went by in a flash. There were so many times along the way I couldn’t remember what it would be like to be home. I’m happy to report that it feels like fierce hugs from grandsons and smells like testing Billie Eilish perfume with my granddaughter at Target and sounds like the grind of a tile cutter as renovations continue in the main house and tastes like drinking my favorite red wine from the ceramic cup I got on a trip to McMinnville earlier this summer. And it looks like autumn, because the leaves are just starting to turn.

Blue sky and autumn tree in my neighborhood earlier this week.

So many times I wasn’t sure I’d ever get back here. (Not in a real physical danger sense but metaphorically.) When I thought about being home, it felt surreal. Now that I’m here, it feels good. But what’s surreal is that since I left home on September 3, I’ve been in Paris, Perpignan, Céret, Nice, Sanremo, Perugia, a villa in Umbria, Montone, and Rome. (Or more to the point, the fishing village of Fiumicino, where the Rome airport is located.) All told we’ve stayed in seven different places and ridden in planes, shuttles, taxis, rental cars and trains.

We’ve taught eight writers in two different locations, shared and bonded with one guest author, and countless other people along the way. (Though some of those encounters have not been especially warm and fuzzy, like the exasperated Italian grocery clerk who had to shut down her line to go weigh lemons when I had failed to do so.) Writers had epiphanies, cursed us (at least mentally), despaired, and then pulled out some of their best work. One of our people arrived in Umbria fresh off a grueling tour of Venice, Florence, and Rome and promptly started a new project and wrote over 4,000 words. Hell, it’s probably 6,000 by now. All good stuff, too.

I’ve missed my husband and son’s birthdays and countless early mornings with grandchildren sleepily entering my space to say good morning. I’ve carried the sea turtle stuffie my granddaughter gave me to watch over me from B and B to hotel to weird rentals to old world villas. I’ve missed kid sleepovers and the three-year-old’s tantrums. And more, much more that I haven’t heard about, texts being an imperfect communication system.

But I’ve also petted donkeys, walked up a steep cobblestone hill at night in a drenching rainstorm, eaten gelato in Assisi, listened to writers read their work, had a spectacular dinner in Montone interrupted by a precipitously drunk person we named Boise Woman, barely made it to the Gare de Lyon station on time to catch our train in that drenching rainstorm in Paris, savored a frankly pretty shitty reheated fish dinner in Sanremo when we thought we were not going to get any food, reconnected with an old friend who came to Céret, met wonderful new friends, gazed out at the green valleys and hills of Umbria, had hilarious conversations with the owner of this villa who doesn’t speak English (and I don’t speak Italian), learned how to weigh produce and tag it in the grocery store in Umbertide (except for that one incident with the lemons), watched Catalan natives dance the Sardane, had an Orangina at the Cafe Des Arcades in Céret every afternoon while planning the next day’s workshop, survived an unfortunate incident with the rental car, a cute bright blue Peugeot, and more, so much more that I can’t pull into my crowded mind at the moment.

My takeaway from all this?

I have no idea. I really don’t know.

What I do know is that now that I’m back home, I’m prone to thinking, wow, last week at this time I was gazing out at the mist settling in on the hills behind the villa. But then I think, now I am here doing this. And that is it, isn’t it? It’s what it’s all about: being here, there, wherever you are in the moment, paying attention so that you can put words about it on the page. Living every moment wherever you are. (And with luck, traveling afar will make you appreciate being home so much more.)

The afore-mentioned mist settling onto the Umbrian hills.

And this is it—this is what we have. This moment, this life which goes by in flashes of wonder or terror or joy or sorrow. And this is why we write, is it not? So that we can hold onto it, make sense of it. Remember. Tell the story. I was there in France one week and then I was in Italy and then I cam home and each experience is important and worthy of telling. I’m no longer in an exotic location, unless you think that watching the three-your-old smile that shy smile or the eight-year-old tell you how much he missed you or the almost-teen nod his head in studied cool or the dog jumping all over you or the granddaughter saying, “Nonni,” in the exasperated voice only a pre-teen can effect is exotic.

And I do. I really do.

We write about our stories because our stories are who we are. The stories we tell about ourselves are who we are. The stories we tell about others are who we are, too. Travel becomes part of us, informs our stories. As does home. It’s all worthy of writing about. It’s all good. It’s all exotic. It’s all there waiting for us to put it on the page. And we are the lucky ones that we get to do it.

Love, light, and good writing,

Charlotte

P.S. Please leave a comment or hit reply and tell me what you’ve been up to! Seriously, it’s been a hot minute, catch me up. What are you writing? Are you loving the season change?

P.P.S. Lots more photos on my Instagram page.

Articles and Resources

A friend who grew up in Appalachia says this organization has an excellent list of resources for donations to hurricane relief.

Great article on character from Donald Maass

Emotional resilience for writers. (And a look at the current publishing market.)

Here’s an article about Céret from Reta, one of the writers who attended.

And below is novelist Jojo Moyes’ tips on getting over a writing bloack.

Walk, cultivate a nemesis, watch a really bad movie - how to get out of a sticky writing patch.

Books

Book listings will return next week.

Overseas Workshops

Yes, we’re just back from one European adventure, but we are already planning next year’s events. The information about England in May is up on the website and we already have sign-ups. We’ll also be returning to France and more on that will follow.

Other places to connect with me:

Buy my books

Instagram

My website (badly in need of an upgrade)

Our workshop website

My original blog (now for archive purposes only, no longer updated)

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Ways I can help you:

Book coaching

Manuscript evaluation

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